In June, Princeton’s campus lost to retirement an eloquent teller of
its tales. William Harris has for the past 14 years been Princeton’s
archivist and librarian for special collections. He seems to know all
there is to know about Princeton Seminary—the whos, whats, wheres, and
whens since the founding plan of PTS was drawn up in 1811. Harris counts
himself privileged to have had such an intimate relationship with this
institution that, he says, for its whole history has had “sound learning
and vital piety” at its heart.

His own work at Princeton has had the same heart, which comes across as
this gentle Indiana gentleman excitedly considers how the Pentateuch
relates to his vocation.

The Spirit of Princeton

by William O. Harris

As retirement looms I have been affectionately recalling my 52-year
connection with Princeton Seminary. I entered here as a student in the
fall of 1951 and feel a profound debt of gratitude for the friends,
professors, and opportunities this place has given me through the
succeeding years as a student, an alumnus, and, for the past 14 years, as
librarian for archives and special collections. Looking back over those
years with the charge to write about the peak experiences, three stand out
as characteristic of the spirit of Princeton Seminary.

“I think a large part of what I do is an extension of the fifth
commandment—to honor our fathers and mothers in the faith,” he says.
“There’s certainly a lot to honor in the Princeton tradition. And I’ve
tried to make it a little easier to honor our fathers and mothers here.
Also, I feel guilty when we tell bad stories about good people. That’s
hateful gossip. And that’s bearing false witness, to again use a
commandment. So I’ve tried to dig out a lot of the good that has gone on
here at the Seminary.”

Some of that digging has been literal.

He found the decaying remnants of the Seminary students’ 19th-century
missionary museum buried in the mud in the Carriage House’s cellar. The
valuable items he found—from Buddha statues to Chinese vases to an African
witchdoctor’s mask—have been restored, and PTS professor of the history of
religions Richard Young has since been doing some research on the items
and on the history of the Seminary’s early missions involvement. (Harris
points out that Princeton sent its first missionary, Henry Woodward, Class
of 1818, to Sri Lanka in 1820 and went on to send more missionaries during
that time than any other seminary in the country.)

Another proud achievement was finding and then restoring some 90 portraits
of PTS-associated people that had been “piled in the basement of the
library like cordwood. Many were ripped and torn by frames jamming into
each other, and the frames themselves were in awful shape.” They now hang
around the Seminary, most prominently in Mackay’s Main Lounge and the
classrooms of Stuart Hall, each with a small corresponding card that tells
the story of the subject.

“I love that text in Hebrews 11—that we’re surrounded by a great cloud of
witnesses,” he says fondly (a man who speaks as though the mid-nineteenth
century were bumping right up next to today). “I think we ought to honor
that history we have at the Seminary, rather than to neglect or condemn
it.”

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Harris arrived at Princeton Seminary as a student in 1951 from his home in
southern Indiana. (In June Harris returned to Indiana and moved into a
retirement home—but not to worry, he had already contacted the University
of Southern Indiana library, and they have since gained an adept
volunteer.) He was Presbyterian and wanted to be a minister. He studied
hard and also had fun.

Some of the fun, he says, came as part of dealing with what he calls a
constant and unhappy part of the Seminary’s past hundred years. “There’s
been a tension between those who are aggressively adjusting to the culture
and those who are clinging defensively to the past,” he says sadly. It’s
still here today. On a solemn note, it led to a split of the Seminary in
1929. On a lighter note, during Harris’s time some people (“well,” he
sighs with a smile, “me included”) would torment the conservatives by
drinking a little too much and then rolling a cannonball down the stairs
of Alexander Hall. The directory was also dubbed “the fundy finder” when
he was a student.

After graduation, Harris served as a U.S. Navy chaplain and at several
churches before landing as associate pastor at the First Presbyterian
Church in Philadelphia. He enjoyed the ministry, especially with youth and
those who were living on the street. But the demands became too much, and
the support for his downtown ministry was too little. High blood pressure
and a doctor’s subsequent order meant change was necessary. So Harris
started down a different path and enrolled in a one-year library science
master’s degree at Indiana University.

The reminiscence turns sad and he says, “I’ve never been able quite to
reconcile…well, I’ve always been a bit embarrassed about leaving pastoral
ministry. I’ve always thought it was a kind of failure on my part. But I’m
not sure what else I could do.”

Well, what he did was turn his 25-year career in libraries into a
ministry. He has ministered by helping people in their research, which, he
says, “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.” At Princeton, he’s aided research on
Puritanism and Presbyterianism—as well as about Archibald Alexander
(1772–1851, “the seminary’s first professor, who still has many books in
print”); Theodore Wright (1797–1847, “the third African American to study
at an American institution of higher learning, and the first to attend an
American seminary”); Charles Hodge (1797–1878, “America’s greatest scholar
of Augustine in the 19th century”); Emily Dickinson (1830–1886, “who had a
great soul friendship—well, some say affair—with a married alum who
ministered in Philadelphia but brought her often to Princeton, and
mentions the town and Seminary in some of her poetry”); B.B. Warfield
(1851–1921, “a great forgotten defender of Darwin”); and Henry James Sr.
(1811–1882, “who attended PTS for two years, and was the father of William
and Henry James, the psychologist and novelist, respectively”), to name a
few.

He has also ministered by staying involved and preaching in local
churches, by taking hundreds of students and visitors on walking tours of
the Princeton campus, by bringing history’s truth to light, by being a
steward of the Seminary’s artifacts, and by encouraging those who have
worked for him.

He ministered by making the Princeton community more aware of the cloud
of witnesses by digging up their stories and then conveying them with
colorful, gentlemanly flare. Harris helped to keep alive the witness of
many great (flawed though they were) men and women—witnesses most
importantly to the gospel, but also to the Seminary’s ministry. Princeton
Seminary is grateful that this historian/minister kept his head in the
clouds.